Questions from future player (evolution, Igougo,storage)

Well, that's a lot. Let's see how much I can help with:

Evolution: With the shutdown of the planet in order, probably the biggest evolution has been the rise of playing virtually. My own country has been organising tournaments on a pretty regular basis (usually playing one round a week, to allow for opponents' schedules to align). It's no substitute for physical gaming, but new tools like War Table have made it a more pleasant experience. Meanwhile, PP continues to release and tease new models, but there are delays and community testing is on hold while physical distancing remains in effect.

Igougo: So, I play a few different games, including ones like Malifaux (an alternating activation system, as you'd be aware). I don't consider either mode of play inherently superior to the other. Alternating Activations has its perks, but what Igougo allows for is the development and execution of big, complicated turns with lots of interlocking activations. You really get to flex those problem solving muscles, because your opponent won't be interrupting you mid-sequence once they see what you're trying to achieve. This often combines well with the game's win-by-assassination mechanic. If your opponent has put you in a corner, you get to pause, think, and bring everything you have to bear in opening a path to their Warcaster and winning the game. I usually spend my opponent's turn thinking through my own next turn and trying to get the groundwork started on that plan. There will be games where you're more or less idly waiting for your opponent to finish so that you can get back to doing things, but I look at like this - Each round, my opponent is assembling a puzzle that I need to solve, while trying to solve the puzzle I presented them in my turn. If my opponent needs some time to think to come up with the best puzzle possible, that's cool, and the fun I get from solving (or failing to solve) in return is worth that time investment.

Model viability: The best way to find out what's relevant would be to ask, I imagine If you're interested in Grymkin, for example, the good news is that most of their models range from good to great. Once you settle on a faction, and you have a playstyle in mind, it's a lot easier to narrow down the list of models you should be keeping an eye out for.

Factions: If you describe yourself as a control player, Grymkin is definitely a good faction to consider. They tend, as a rule, to be about slow, melee-centric armies that dictate what opponents can and can't do on a given turn through their Arcana. Dreamer is generally considered one of the premier Control Warlocks in the game. Circle Orboros also has some very strong Control options, Krueger2 has been considered the peak Control character for about as long as he's been in the game. Protectorate has some good denial options, though they lean a bit more towards straight attrition these days I believe. The other factions you listed more or less interact with their opponent's models primarily through killing them, but you might still find them fun choices. Retribution and Crucible Guard like to field strong shooting options, and killing the enemy at range can feel a bit like control as you edge up on attrition without exposing your own pieces.

It's worth noting that while Trolls and, to an extent, Retribution are considered towards the bottom end of the competitive scale compared to the factions you listed, there's not really a big gap between the top and bottom of the game. Infernals, incidentally, play very differently from the other factions, and you'll spend a bit more time squirreled away in your half of the board learning to make your army's energy economy work properly so that you can summon more monsters and drown out your opponent. They're very cool, and very strong, and don't really compare easily to anything else out there.

Storage: I'm afraid I don't really have any experience with the box in question. For my part I primarily keep my minis in army boxes from KR. You could check them out here: www.krmulticase.com/ My collection has grown fairly large, so I have about half a dozen different boxes at this point to store all my minis in, but I've also been playing this game for nearly a decade now and I've bought some fairly ridiculous numbers of duplicate models to try out different skew lists (like owning eight Bone Grinder units, or six of each Warbeast, that kind of craziness).

Other people in this thread have already given great examples, but I would just like to add something about the IGOUGO system. When I was younger, I also used to play chess. I was just a kid, so I eventually got bored of it, because I felt like I had plateaued and I didn't get to do much on my opponent's turns.
Sometimes Warmachine turns can take something like half an hour, but I have played games of chess where my opponent thought for half an hour about one move, going over all the options to see what would have the best end result.

Now, it happens sometimes that you get "distracted" while your opponent is playing their turn, but what usually happens, for me is that I play my own turn with a specific goal and have a rough idea of what I want to achieve on my next turn. As my opponent responds during their turn, certain parts of the plan lose viability and the plan has to change, so you adjust. There is also a prevalent atmosphere to declare what you're doing and what you are rolling dice for. This is mostly so that everything is clear and there are no unnecessary arguments, but also serves to keep the other player engaged. Warmachine/Hordes is an open-information game, but is so large that it is impossible to remember every single thing in existence, so questions about the opposing army get asked a lot, which most people will answer verbally, again promoting engagement.

Together with the other things that have been said, I don't see igougo as a disadvantage, but rather a feature of the game.

Grymkin and Convergence of Cyriss are so-called "limited factions", so they are not likely to receive many new releases as opposed to a "main faction" such as Protectorate of Menoth which has a more regular expansion schedule.
Note that all of the limited factions have something unique about that that makes them diverge a bit from the standard rules. For Grymkin this is using Arcana instead of Feats, and for CoC this is the Induction system for focus.

I would try to find out which faction appeals to you most, aesthetically and mechanically, and go for that one, knowing that the CoC or Grymkin deal will get you (close to) faction-complete, and while the Protectorate does seem like a good deal, will leave you with more things you might want to pick up.